Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid — Andre Baum

Light Sweet Crude, Act 1: Hybrid

iTUNES

 
My new album 'Light Sweet Crude | Act 1: Hybrid" started out as a personal journey, like my previous ones. But at some point along the way, one collaboration lead to another which lead to another, and so on. The idea evolved into a collaborative one, where the songs I was writing took on other shapes and meanings. New songs developed through these creative comminglings. ‘Light Sweet Crude’ has been very much like a spiral starting from one point, moving outwards and opening into a dynamic and complex formation.

Each producer comes from such a unique perspective. At the same time, there’s a commonality that runs through all of their music, a sonic connection which translates into a philosophical one. I love how these connections create a thread which runs through the album, and how their differences lead to an exciting asymmetry and disambiguation. In a series of posts, I'll be discussing each Producer, in alphabetical order…..........

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André Baum is a master at sonic synthesis. His library of sounds is vast - finding the slightest hum of a fan fascinating, André can turn what might seem like an ordinary sound into an audible sculptural form, giving meaning to what would otherwise go unheard. His work emphasizes the inchoate aspects of existence, the immense importance of listening, of hearing - and beyond that - of tuning-in to the world. André’s ‘sound’ is in and of itself a Thesis Statement, that the world we live in is alive sonically, oscillating and pulsing invisibly, reminding us that verything is waiting to be heard, listened to, uncloaked, decoded.

André & I share a fascination with sonics, sounds which evoke and suggest transcendent, nameless things. While producing "One Thing I'm Missing", André tuned into the core of the meaning of the song, a bluesy rumination on the theme of missing the one you love, and the blazing realization that beauty & the bittersweet often reside in the same psychological & sonic space. 

I love exploring new terrain with André who, like me, is always searching, pushing his own creative envelope into further liminal & untrodden realms. "One Thing I'm Missing" is a meditation on those unspoken achings which only music can express.

XVanessa



ONE THING I’M MISSING You're on time, I came early
Just to see if you’d keep your word
After everything I've heard
I'm surprised I still have faith
Your promise is so easy to break


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing


You're the type to mix love with liquid
Stir it up into a troubling brew
Make me lose my way
Take the apple from the snake
A habit you taught me


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing


Summertime, but nothing's easy
I'm out for Jazz and Cocktails without you
I hear fifty shades of blue
A color you’ve gotten me used to
And that’s when I realize


Today was a beautiful day
There's just one thing that I'm missing
The bittersweetness of your kissing

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Poetronics: Vanessa Daou's "One Thing I'm Missing"

By Imran Khan

A New York Times review of Chinese writer Can Xue’s work asserted that reading the author’s fiction is like “running downhill in the dark; you’ve got momentum, but you don’t know where you’re headed.”  Such a sentiment could be said of Vanessa Daou’s newest work; much of her recent explorations with club culture incite the chancy, dangerous thrill of experiment. Daou has already made a name for herself with her astonishing mix of spoken word and electronic beats on her six previous albums. Her voice, an eerie, peculiar sigh which brings a yielding and sensual warmth to her sultry grooves, is equally noted for its unbridled femininity. 
 
Not exactly an official single, “One Thing I’m Missing” is a taster for Daou’s upcoming release, Light, Sweet, Crude, an album that will delve into the further reaches of hip-hop and electronica after the heavily jazz-leaning offering of 2008’s Joe Sent Me. “One Thing I’m Missing” still trades on the downbeat tempos of her last album but fully engages in the atmospherics of digital paranoia, with icy sheets of synths layered upon a druggy, languid groove. Daou’s vocal, a strange, twisted call resounding from some Promethean netherworld, is essentially the hinge of which producer André Baum builds his rhythms upon, the cadence of his groove flowing with the awkward, elegant grace of a frozen river thawing. Sinuous, ghostly and poetic, this number heralds a return to Daou’s previous flirtations with DJ culture.  

 Read more & 'Like' @ PopMatters

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House Playlist: Lorde, Phantogram, Glasser, & Vanessa Daou

Vanessa Daou, "One Thing I'm Missing": Best known for a string of '90s club hits including "Near the Black Forest" (from her 1995 opus Zipless, which appeared on our list of the Best Albums of the 1990s), singer Vanessa Daou has dropped a trippy slice of chill-out called "One Thing I'm Missing," from producer André Baum's new compilation People People Volume 1, out now.

Read full post @ SLANT